Can only marred couples answer please.

[Richesme]

After my last posts about my husband wanting to go halves in paying bills rent etc when I start working full time, I’ve sat down with him and even though we had a disagreement about going halves, he eventually said, you can keep all your money to yourself and do your own spendings or savings from there.

He doesn’t believe that couples either put all their money in one pot or go halves in proportionate to their wages. His works in the bank therefore tells me that he has many customers come in to open joint accounts and they go halves.

I want to find out as married couples, how do you guys manage your money, bills, rent, mortgage, spendings, savings and investments?

I've always said, money is the ruin of couples.

Our finances are completely separate and always will be.

when i was in a pervious relationship - our money went into our own accounts. we then split 50/50 by his request - bastard - as he earned far more and had masses to spend whereas i didnt. and I payed for the kids stuff. Never again.

Now we do proportional to our incomes - though ironically i'm now the high earner. but it's proportional - and he doies the childcare when i'm on site as well - which is a huge help.

Joint account as soon as we bought a house together (5yrs before we got married). Wages all go into the same account. Each of us has a credit card with the other person named on it to maximise points. We don’t consult each other when we buy something, if we want it we just get it. We have a similar approach to saving and spending which helps and we earn a similar amount. Even if I earned twice as much as him we would still do the same as we’re a team and we think of money as joint money.

All money goes into the joint account. We take an equal amount of "spending money" to do what we like with. Everything else gets paid/saved jointly.

We have joint account - but we don't use it the way most couples do - as far as I am aware

We get paid into our own individual account - then we deposit our share of the bills and savings into the joint accounts.

I am the higher earner and was always happy to share everything with DH but he felt weird about "spending my money" even though I don't care and I view everything as equal - so I tend to treat him and the kids more just because I have more slush generally.

I know it isn't the "norm" on MN but it's how we have always done it - together for 8 years and married for 6

All the money into one account. I don't understand how a married couple can manage money completely separately. I can understand having spending money put into a separate account for fun stuff each month, especially if someone is a bit rubbish with money management.
What blows my mind the most if the lack of long term planning between couples with separate money. What happens when you retire if one doesn't have much in terms of pension savings? Are you going to just let them starve?

Our money goes to a joint account and we use it from there. We have separate savings accounts just because it's easier (ISAs etc) than joint, but they are funded from the joint bank account. DH does not really get involved with money and I do all the admin but it's all both of ours.

We have a joint account and though my husband earns way more than me, he has never made me feel like I have "to account for what I spend my money on".

This thread is quite depressing I agree with a PP.

Not just that men continue to earn so much more than women, but also attitudes don't seem to have moved forward.

My husband is in his 60s but we always had a joint account and he accepts that I only earn less because I had more responsibilities for unpaid child care when the children were younger and for raising the children. That undoubtedly hindered my career progression as I worked part time only for many years and then in a job that fitted around school times. But we're a team.

We've always done a percentage of ours wages go into the joint account (around 70% I think). I like it just because it doesn't feel like we have to talk to each other about any big fun spending as I like going out a lot and he likes expensive clothes/ shoes. We wouldn't restrict each other but it's nice not feeling too accountable about that stuff.

We aren't super rule bound though because we both have personal savings we spend on stuff for the family that makes sense, we don't niggle about percentages there.

Both salaries into one pot, joint account. We earn the same now but we have earned varying amounts over 26 years but there is no record of in and out. DH inherited and decided what it was spent on but it was spent on us all. We both inherited from my uncle but DH respectfully let me decide what to do with that, it went on the mortgage and then some paintings I picked for the house. there is no more his and mine, its ours.

We have separate accounts. We know how much each other earns. We chose which bills to pay so that our outgoings are roughly equal, but we consider all money in the house to belong to both of us. We don’t have a “fun budget”, we just do what we want and trust each other to not go mad. We discuss and agree big purchases.

Separate finances. I pay for everything as I'm the only one with an income. I write him a cheque if he needs money for anything.

I earned substantially more than my husband - it was never an issue. All money into the joint account.

Some wives I was friendly with seemed to enjoy joking about hiding their purchases from their husbands. I felt they were doing themselves a huge disservice. Perpetuating this old fashioned male dominance of the finances. Women should absolutely make sure they know what money you both have and where it is. Any refusal of this is a big red flag.

We both put half of our wages into the joint account. DH earns more than me so he puts more in. We both have access to the joint account, although DH lost his bank card years ago and hasn't bothered getting a new one so it' mostly me that uses it for shopping etc. All of our bills and mortgage comes out of that account too.

We each keep back the same amount of personal money from our paychecks and everything else goes into joint accounts (current & savings).

We started doing this when I was on mat leave. Before that we both paid the same monthly amount into our joint account & joint savings and kept the rest for ourselves, but earned broadly similar and obviously pre child had fewer joint expenses like nursery etc.

All money into the one pot, including lump sums, inheritances etc. We both have similar spending habits and outlook towards money, so just spend as required without discussion. We would discuss major expenditure. I can honestly say that in over 25 years we have never disagreed about finances.

We started off earning similar amounts, then I went pt after children and the gap grew.

DH manages all of our money and investments but I have total visibility of them.

We have a joint account. All wages go in there, all bills come out of there.
Any money that's left is for both/either of us to use.

We transfer a set amount into a joint account to cover mortgage, bills and food. We also transfer set amounts into savings for holidays. We then have our our own savings accounts, we do consider these as joint total amounts if they are required for something big like a potential future house move but if one of us wanted to use some for a personal spend that’s not a problem.
Everything left over is ours to spend separately.

It’s worked for us so far but if we had children I’d like to move toward all wages everything into the joint account and spending from there. I earn slightly more than DH but not enough to trigger changing the ratios of what we put in, I just cover more discretionary spends like meals out and tickets for things.

Everything is joint - current account, savings account, credit card. Any money that comes into the house is joint, including inheritance, lottery winnings (only small unfortunately!). We don’t have personal accounts.

The only thing that is personal is if we get given cash for birthdays, that is used to buy something for whoever got given it.

we both spend as we see fit but we have similar attitudes to money so it’s never been an issue.

When we originally got together we earned about the same so had our own bank accounts and generally split stuff half and half. Over the years DH has moved around to get promoted and I have taken part time or lower paid jobs in the areas we have moved to to enable this. At the point that this began to happen we added each other to our personal accounts and he started to more or less pay the regular bills and I would chip in for things like birthday and Christmas presents, holidays and anything I needed personally like clothes etc. I am now retired on a small ill health pension while he is in a well paid senior role so that arrangement has continued. We are mortgage free partly because we moved from a more expensive area but also because I used all of a substantial amount of equity in my house to use as a very large deposit on a house we bought jointly. For his part he used a smaller amount of equity from a house sale to enable us to travel extensively for a while. Financially therefore I would say we are a team and the way we manage our money reflects that. There will always be give and take in financial matters as well as in personal and career decisions and things should evolve over time to reflect that.

All our money goes into the same joint accounts, we take out the same amount as 'pocket money' for the month. Most of our expenses are joint anyway but our personal money covers going out with friends, clothes, any non essentials we like. It's been this way since mat leave because my earnings are reduced now working part time- before we had DD we did put matching amounts in the joint.

Typically salaries into personal accounts, transfer 70% into the joint account for bills, family spending etc.

I’m currently the sole earner so now we both have the same amount of fun cash, plus fixed bills (phone, subscriptions etc) which will be in our personal accounts, and the rest goes into the joint account. I manage all things financey, DH wouldn’t know how much savings we have or where they were held without me sharing the info with him routinely.

We keep our own money. We have a joint account for bills and we pay in proportion to our salaries. The rest of our money is our own.

Similar here.

Keep everything totally separate (though we did have a joint mortgage).
We also don't work put who should pay what according to salary - loosely, I pay for food, bills and boring stuff; husband pays for cars, holidays, investments and "big" stuff.
Obviously spend our own money as and how we wish.
It all means we hardly ever need to discuss £££.

Married 35 years, so it works for us.